French Literature

[Irene Wilde]

It's a rare thing for a contemporary author to hold my interest. Off the top of my head, I think there's Pynchon, and that's about it. I think I'll wax philosophical for a moment, and say I think writers in the first half of the 20th Century had a strong sense of the changing times they were living in, or perhaps it's just that, looking back, we can put them in a historical context and see how they reflected those times. There were also interesting groupings of writers, The Lost Generation, The Villa Seurat, The Bloomsbury Group, The Surrealists, The Beats, etc. One doesn't get a feeling that contemporary writers have that kind of communal experience. Certainly the times we are living in are no less turbulent and have no less an opportunity to be world-changing, maybe contemporary culture places less value on literature, more on television and film, or maybe the salons, the Algonquin Roundtables, and so forth, exist more on the internet than in real-life, or maybe the passage of time inflates their importance.

I was reading something somewhere that the Rimbauds, Hemingways, and so forth of previous generations became the over-dosing rock stars of the 60s and 70s. If that could be supposed, I wonder who the rock stars are today.

Totally off track, but it explains why I'm looking for French Surrealists and not reading Child 44.

 

[Mirabell]

Visited my university library today and took home several books because I was too lazy to choose:

Pierre senges: l'idiot et les hommes de paroles
regis jauffret: asiles de fous
eric chevillard: sans l'orang-outan
eric chevillard: oreille rouge


anyone read one of these?

 

[fausto]

Haven't read the Senges nor the Jauffret. Read both Chevillard. You will love the prose, I can tell you that.

 

[saliotthomas]

Cocorricooooo.......

 

[poisson_bleu]

New French discussion list, please join

I encourage all francophones with an interest in 18th Century French literature and politics to please join my brand new discussion group "La Litt?rature des Lumi?res" (in French).

La Litt?rature des Lumi?res | Google Groupes

Group description: "A group for the discussion of the great authors and works of the Age of Enlightenment in France: Montesquieu, Diderot, Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, Sade, Ch?nier, Pr?vost, Laclos, and other literary figures will be debated here. We will also touch upon a few orators: Danton, Mirabeau, St. Just, Robespierre and others."

I hope to see you there!

 

[Jayaprakash]

Heads up to Indian enthusiasts of French literature: Rupa, in collaboration with the French Consulate has a series of inexpensive reprints of American and British english translations of French literature under the imprint Rupa France. It's a pretty good list of French lit from the 20th cent and the present day, ranging from Malraux and Breton to JMG Le Clezio's novel Onitsha and various interesting contemporary French writers.

 

[promtbr]

I think I'll wax philosophical for a moment, and say I think writers in the first half of the 20th Century had a strong sense of the changing times they were living in, or perhaps it's just that, looking back, we can put them in a historical context and see how they reflected those times. There were also interesting groupings of writers, The Lost Generation, The Villa Seurat, The Bloomsbury Group, The Surrealists, The Beats, etc. One doesn't get a feeling that contemporary writers have that kind of communal experience. Certainly the times we are living in are no less turbulent and have no less an opportunity to be world-changing, maybe contemporary culture places less value on literature, more on television and film, or maybe the salons, the Algonquin Roundtables, and so forth, exist more on the internet than in real-life, or maybe the passage of time inflates their importance.

I was reading something somewhere that the Rimbauds, Hemingways, and so forth of previous generations became the over-dosing rock stars of the 60s and 70s. If that could be supposed, I wonder who the rock stars are today.

Totally off track, but it explains why I'm looking for French Surrealists and not reading Child 44.

I love your observation, and I am in total agreement with the historical context and how technology has hugely changed the milieu, the nature and dynamics of how Literature relates in our current culture. I on the otherhand am hugely interested in post modern writers, esp those that have written about the problematic nature of communicating/relating/"knowing" in today's world. (That would explain my current Beckett emersion).

If your interested in The Surrealists, check out the French Dadaists, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Appolinaire.

Curious no mention at all of Proust in a French Lit thread! (no one likes 3 page sentences in this day of online lit "fixes" lol...)

No Malraux, and only one mention of Gide.

My French lit class of 30 yrs ago the only books read were: "Nadja" by Breton, "Swans Way" by Proust, "The Fall" by Camus, "The Immoralist" by Gide, "No Exit" By Sarte ...and the "The Labryrinth" (?) by Robbe-Grillet...

 

[titania7]

Prombtr,
I'm a big fan of Andre Gide. The Counterfeiters is my favorite
of all his books, (see my post in the "50 favorite books thread")
but I have enjoyed many of his other words, as well.

I do, however, have a startling confession....I haven't read much
Proust. I know, I know--what excuse can I make? I will remedy
it when/as I can.

"No Exit" is one of my favorite plays, by the way. Love it. It's one
of the most memorable plays I've ever read.

As for Beckett, I developed an intense interest in him
during my years as an actress. In fact, I attended
a weekly Beckett seminar that one of the well-respected
local theatres hosted for a few months. What
an intriguing man Beckett was. His work is
absolutely amazing.

I asked about which authors were your favorites
in the "Introduce Yourself" thread. I guess you've
already answered me to a certain extent via
this thread.

Best,
Titania


"To accomplish great things, we must dream
as well as act."
~Anatole France

 

[spooooool]

As a Beckett obsessive - my username comes from "Krapp's Last Tape" - i'd recommend almost everything he's written, titania . There's very little of his writing that doesn't work, i think,and i couldn't do without "how it is"and his trilogy, short prose (in particular and especially, there's a lovely volume titled "nohow on" containing some of his very best, recommended if the prose is new to readers w ho aren't sure whether or no Sam's for them)

Also the Knowlson, Cronin biographies and Christopher Ricks for secondary literature

 

[promtbr]

Wow, right on. I could NOT put down the Knowlson Bio!
Recently read the early novel Murphy. Though having some flaws, if it was written by another author, would be considered a major work. Just a haunting book that hits long after...Currently "reading" lol Watt. I will lyk. Right now the narrator has pulled the teleogical rug out from under me (and Sam is winking from the grave...)

Have not read any of his other prose YET.
I am mostly a student of WFG...

 

[titania7]

Spooooool,
Thanks for the biography recommendations. I will certainly check them out. Beckett's work is so unique it makes one anxious to know as much as possible about what he was like as an individual. I will definitely check out more of his work, as well. And finding it is not a problem. I own nearly everything he's written--I bought up a PILE of it when I was going to the weekly seminars. It'll probably
take me a few years to finish all of it.

I appreciate your nick being from "Krapp's Last Tape." I wondered if you might be a Beckett aficionado.

Thanks again.

~Titania

Vladimir: "That passed the time."
Estragon: "It would have passed in any case."
Vladimir: "Yes, but not so rapidly."
~Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 

[nnyhav]

Q&A: The man Samuel Beckett trusted to be his authorized biographer | coloradoan.com | The Coloradoan,

and While You Were Out, Foxrock put Eleutheria (Krap's first tape) into circ, c. '95 (the other play submitted for consideration alongside WFG). Worth backtracking to.

 

[learna]

Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry commemorated by Google doodle | Books | guardian.co.uk

 

[rugbywolf]

I am surprised that not more has been mentioned of one of France’s greatest writers, Ēmile Zola. I have read most of his books, albeit in English, but get the right translations, of any book, and it will be alright. Zola’s main work is of twenty novels collectively called ‘the Rougon-Macquart series’, covering the ten year period of the third Napoleon. It follows one family, each book dealing with a particular member of the family, and covers many subjects, such as farming, the money markets, property speculation, coalmining, alcoholism, prostitution etc, and all very powerfully written. Although it is a series, any of the novels can be read independently of the others. It’s not really a ‘saga’ as many of the stories run in the same time window. Zola is the master of this kind of writing, dealing with such topics as infidelity, murder, religious fervour, pride and greed. I have read these twenty novels, and before I began, read Zola’s biography so as to get the complete list of titles. Also, being interested in genealogy plotted the family history as I went along, but you don’t have to do that!! he has written several other books that are not connected to this series, one,’Theresa Raquin’, which is an account of a cold blooded murder, and the reactions of the perpetrators afterwards. Highly recommended.

 

[lionel]

I agree completely, so to save time I've created a thread that I don't think was there before. Unfortunately, I don't have time to say more now.

Oh, except welcome, rugbywolf!

BLOG

 

[Liam]

Word up to French Literature lovers who... can't read French (you know who you are, ): Pascal Quignard's Prix Goncourt-winning book Les Ombres Errantes or The Roving Shadows is to be published in English (in the States) later this year.

From the Amazon blurb:

There are few if any voices more distinct in contemporary French literature than that of Pascal Quignard, a prolific writer of rare erudition and elegance. Essayist, critic, translator, novelist and musician, Quignard attempts here an ambitious amalgam of his many artistic styles in a fragmentary work that defies the idea of genre.

And his daring was rewarded in 2002 when The Roving Shadows became the first non-novel in more than sixty years to win the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award.

The first book in Quignard’s Last Kingdom series, The Roving Shadows can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death.

Writing and reading can in fact be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations. With dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions.

The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition Les Ombres errantes lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down.

The Roving Shadows is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignard’s reputation in contemporary world literature. Available now for the first time in English, this boldly adventurous work will find a new and welcoming audience.

 

[Liam]

Six hundred years of French Literature through the lens of American Queer Theory:

The Inverted Gaze: Queering the French Literary Classics in America by Francois Cusset

For those that enjoy that sort of thing. I might check out the medieval section.

 

[lenz]

I've just read Marie Ndiaye's Trois Femmes Puissante and found it particularly difficult to read. I'm not a fluent reader but I was more often stumped by the syntax in this book than in almost any French book I've read. Is it just me, or does anyone else who reads her in French notice this?

lenz

 

[lionel]

I've just read Marie Ndiaye's Trois Femmes Puissante and found it particularly difficult to read. I'm not a fluent reader but I was more often stumped by the syntax in this book than in almost any French book I've read. Is it just me, or does anyone else who reads her in French notice this?

lenz

It's not you: she's very difficult to read. I had great problems with Rosie Carpe earlier this year, until I remembered this article, which is perfectly legible if increased in size. She's an amazing writer once you begin to understand what she's doing.

BLOG

 

[lenz]

It's not you: she's very difficult to read. I had great problems with Rosie Carpe earlier this year, until I remembered this article, which is perfectly legible if increased in size. She's an amazing writer once you begin to understand what she's doing.

Thanks, Lionel. That article goes some way to explaining it. What seemed most strange to me was that the stories themselves are not structurally confusing but they are read through a kind of intricate lacework of words. I'm not sure that that helps to convey the meaning or even the ambiguity or the fact of les ruptures élémentaires de la parenté, I just found it a bit irritating. Still, I was very impressed with the stories and their interesting characters.